


Curbside

by zanni_scaramouche



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Louis Tomlinson-centric, M/M, Toxic Relationship, Unhealthy Relationships, hmmm, tell me if there's more
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23087539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zanni_scaramouche/pseuds/zanni_scaramouche
Summary: You only remember two names when you're this drunk and this tired.
Relationships: Harry Styles/Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik/Liam Payne
Kudos: 19





	Curbside

**Author's Note:**

> Another one?! Another one. 
> 
> I have a HUGE wip right now and this.... this is not that. 
> 
> ugh.
> 
> Was once based on the song 'Call My Dad' by AJR but then it ran away from me. Will I ever stop writing in second POV? Who knooows (please to god I hope so!)

On your eighteenth birthday you opened a box wrapped with too much tape and found the pair of shoes currently on your feet. The past five years have brought no less than three holes, stains from food you've dropped, and at some point half the shoelace broke off and they’ve been tangled in a knot you can't remember making. You could count the pebbles wedged between your thin soles and the pavement as you idly grind them. The sound and feel of their grit is soothing.

When you locked your front door your shirt had still been tucked in from work. The text had come quickly and there was barely time to chug a glass of water and take a piss before running back out to meet the lads. It does nothing to warm you, the last three buttons that haven’t gone missing are done up offset from their proper place, leaving it as loose and off centred as you feel.

Running your tongue along your gums you find they’re lined in something thick, the back of your throat scratchy from the smoke you choked on and the weed that made your eyes water. They laughed at you, but you were laughing too. Ridiculous. You couldn’t believe how trying to be cool could really be so lame.

Wind is starting to pick up. Your jacket got left behind on the rooftop, you gave it to one of the girls who’d been wearing nothing but a long shirt as a dress. After the friendly back slaps and jostles of a pub and the noisy crush of limbs in a club you somehow found yourself dancing on a roof like you were in a music video. It should have been more fun than it was, probably inspired envy under the right filter but only inspired the errant thought of how being above the rest of the city did nothing to lift you out of your head.

The ends of your hair keep catching on your eyelashes as you blink against the purpling sky that reminds you of the bruises on the back of your hand. When you rub your palms against your face there's a layer of stickiness between the skin, and you don’t know if it’s liquor or sweat or alarmingly, the spit of the man you punched. Those girls with the short dresses and eiffel height shoes weren’t quite friends of yours, but you’ve never been known as a quiet person who sat back and watched. 

When a bloke stopped listening you boxed his ears to help him hear. Maybe you were too quick to act, but you’ve been on the edge for too long not to take the excuse to lash out. There's an ache in your knuckles when you jam them into the jeans you shouldn’t have worn because they always leave your ankles bare and freezing. You savour the sting of raw skin because it reminds you of him.

Everyone disappeared. You hadn’t wanted to go with them, and it’s not that you regret choosing to stay behind, but you wish you had chosen to stay behind at the beginning instead of the end. This should be the end, but you’re not home yet. Where are you? Someone had been driving, and you’re pretty sure they’d been sober, they must have been because you’re stupid but you're not stupid enough not to know that, but it didn’t stop them from driving like they were immortal on the highway. 

The girls squealed and stuck their hands out of the roof, the guys shouting with their heads out the windows and banging the doors, and you. You sat in the middle of it all with your hands clenched on your thighs and your blood singing electric. The speedometer passed into triple digits and it came nowhere near the rush you crave.

Silence rings with the memory of all that noise. All that life you’ve experienced in just one night. Your chest is heavy, so heavy you stumble and your hands aren’t quick enough to ease how harshly you land on your ass but your palms still sting where the pebbles once under your feet now scrape against thin skin. You might press into it a little more than you need to, a little too much until you feel it split so when you flip it over you see a spot of blood smeared across your love line. 

Past your palm your left shoe is untied. You could have tripped. Did you? Maybe the shoelace hasn’t always been broken, maybe you broke it when you got caught in the car door as you fell out.

Trying to remember makes the world spin. The earth is flat and solid when you fall back onto it with your eyes on the sky. Like you’re lying on a slab of ice the ground soaks every bit of warmth you hadn’t thought you had left and replaces it with the sharp edge of reality. You don’t want to be here, lying in the road of a neighbourhood you can’t name and will never live in.

The phone takes convincing to edge it’s way out of your pocket. The weight of it is a boulder on your chest, its backlight piercing. Your fingers are clumsy and they slide on something slick smeared over the screen as you pull up the one person you want right now. One of two names you always think of when this drunk and this tired.

The electronic ringing is a siren interrupting the world, an earthquake six inches tall.

“Lou?”

His deep slur of a voice tells you of your mistake. Sleeping, like a normal person. What’s a normal person like him going to think when he sees you like this? You know, because it wont be the first time and it probably wont be the last and someday he’s not going to fucking pick up the phone. You shouldn’t have called him. But he’s already on the line, and there’s a reason you dialed.

“Can you-” you choke on your own spit a bit, which is what you get for lying straight on your back, “Can you pick me up?”

He must hear the whine in your throat. You’re pathetic.

“Stay put.”

You rattle off blurry street names you squint to read upside down and listen to the rustle of his clothes, the jingle of his keys, the scrape of a door. The ambient hum of wind against car windows and the hush of his breathing lulls you half to sleep. A kick to the foot and you’re up you’re up, stumbling into the front seat and reclining with your eyes already closed.

The driver's side door shuts and the ground starts moving beneath you. Sleep pulls you deep into the soft leather.

“Zayn didn’t come home last night.”

You blink just enough to see his profile sideways, it’s been silent so long you think maybe you missed something between the first word and opening your eyes. You hum to prove you’re alive.

“Third time this month. And I know when he comes home he’ll be smelling sweet, like candy” he glances over and holds your eyes, “like a girl.”

You try to picture it. Zayn. With a girl. It’s not hard to see.

“Shit,” Suddenly sleep seems very far away, but your tongue is still thick as you speak, “What’re you gonna do?”

Liam huffs, like he’s amused, like he’s not talking about his fiance fucking a woman, “Nothing, fuck if I can compete with that.”

You wait, but he means it. He even looks like he means it, his shoulders rounded and hands relaxed on the steering wheel and not a sign anywhere that he cares as the ground keeps moving beneath you and the golden morning sun passes over his face. He must feel your questions.

“He does the dishes every night and he still fucks me after. He never complains when I steal the covers. We still work.” He shrugs, “why mess with something when everyones happy?”

Why indeed. It makes a certain amount of sense in your fogged mind. Liam and Zayn have been together longer than you’ve had the shoes on your feet. No one blinked at their engagement. You’re blinking a lot now, but it could be from the hair catching in your lashes again.

“You?” He glances, sideways and considering and a beat too long like he’s been wanting to say what he’s about to say for a time, “I don’t think you two have ever been happy.”

The fire that scorches your veins when your nails sink into his skin, the hot wave of jealousy when his body presses against someone else, the biting and scratching and shoving when you collide. The bruises left on you both. The cutting way he laughs when you tell him he’s yours, seconds before he slams you against a wall makes you earn him. 

Idly you find your knuckle is in your mouth. Your teeth scrape over where it’s torn and press deep to feel the sting. The last time you saw him was three weeks ago, and you wish you didn’t know the exact number of days, practically down to the second, since he last had a hand around your throat. But you do.

Liam’s right. It’s not happiness, but try telling an addicted man heroin won't bring him happiness. Because the only thing you’ve thought about all night is this moment. All the drinking, and the dancing, and the partying, it all leads to you leaning against your doorstep and fumbling with your phone as Liam drives away.

It won't be the first time and it won't be the last, and someday he’s not going to pick up the fucking phone. You call the second name you always remember when you’re this drunk and this tired.

“Louis.” His voice is so deep he’s practically singing your name.

“Harry,” you hum.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and enabling my distraction! 
> 
> Where the F is Niall, my fave, in all this? On vacation sipping tiny umbrella cocktails because he's too pure for this bullshit. 
> 
> Graphics for all of my lovely lil fics are on tumblr if you wanna take a peak :)   
> https://zanniscaramouche.tumblr.com/post/612169342595072000/curbside-you-only-remember-two-names-when-youre
> 
> Kudos & Comments & Love <3


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